Words In The DarkThe Official Blog of Obsidian Portal2015-07-22T20:16:46Zhttp://blog.obsidianportal.com/feed/atom/WordPressJerryhttp://blog.obsidianportal.com/?p=29842015-07-22T20:16:46Z2015-07-22T20:15:39Z#LINK#]]> | Episode 129|

Announcements

This is a special episode of Haste that I hope you’ll all listen to and provide any feedback on that you might have. Thanks folks!

Topics

End of An Era

Hey there listeners, special episode of Haste for you this week. I’m sure some of you saw this coming but, I felt it was necessary to start the conversation and get the info out there. I’d appreciate any feedback, questions, or commentary you all might have.

I hope you all understand, and I hope you continue to tune in for our upcoming final episode, and whatever podcast comes next for Obsidian Portal.

As always, and from the very deepest recesses of my gazebo shaped heart, thanks for listening.

Announcements

No announcements today, we’re just jumping right into the show with Jason, we hope you enjoy!

Topics

Thin Blue Line: A Detroit Police Story

Tonight we’re joined by the wonderful Mr. Jason Marker. Freelance game designer who has done work on Warhammer 40k, the new Star Wars games, and a lot more. I bug him all about his new game and Kickstarter for Thin Blue Line. Tune in to find out:

]]>2Jerryhttp://blog.obsidianportal.com/?p=29732015-07-13T16:29:50Z2015-06-19T16:37:45Z#LINK#]]>Time For A New Set of Armor

For a long time, we’ve always gotten great feedback on our shirts. We’re really happy that our community members have been a huge fan of the “My Other Shirt is Chainmail” design for quite some time now.

It’s time for something new though, but this time we’re going to let you, our community, design them! These are going to be the shirts we send to fans, give away as prizes, wear at conventions, and for the general purpose of showing our Obsidian Portal spirit.

Contest Details

The contest starts today and we’re going to take submissions through July 17th, after that point we’ll let the voting begin. For 5 days OP community members will have a chance to click on over and cast their vote for the favorite shirt design. After voting is closed, we’ll be announcing our winner and two runners-up.

UPDATE: T-shirt design submission has been extedned to the 17th of July!

Not only will the winner be the shirt we create and become our new official T-shirt and $30 to spend, we’ll also be sending it over to Teespring and making it available for all OP fans to purchase. That’s right, you have been asking for the ability to buy OP shirts for years, and it’s finally going to become a reality!

Just to sweeten the deal, the winner will also receive 3 months of Ascendant time. Our 2nd and 3rd place runners up will also receive $20 each and a free month of Ascendant time, and also a chance for their design to be made available for purchase in the future.

I bet you’re wondering where to start? Well the sky’s the limit here, create something that you feel invokes the awesomeness of Obsidian Portal and send it our way! The main design constraints are that the imagery must be suited for either a black or white cotton T-shirt. Just click the link above to submit your design via our form. The technical specifics are below:

4 colors or less, monochrome is ok

At least 300 dpi resolution or better

EPS, PSD, or AI format

Artwork must be your own, or public domain / open source. No copyrighted images allowed unless permission is given by the artist

If your entry does not meet the submission criteria, we’ll be forced to reject it, but rest assured you can resubmit once any necessary changes are made. New to t-shirt design? There are some pretty great tips over on the Teespring Blog if you want a good place to start. We’re looking forward to everyone’s submissions!

Announcements

Today we’re re-launching the Haste podcast, of course with a few changes pending yesterday’s news. Micah will no longer be a part of the show, but I’m currently in the works of setting up my new co-host. The format of the show may undergo a few tweaks and changes but nothing too major. In the meantime I’ll be doing interviews and news blurbs as usual until we get back to a 100% regular structure and release schedule.

It’s good to be back!

Topics

Shadow of the Demon Lord

Tonight we’re joined by the illustrious Mr. Rob Schwalb to talk all about Shadow of the Demon Lord as we kick the podcast back into action. We go in depth about Rob’s new game, asking all the whys and the hows. Tune in for a great show!

I know that over the past few months a good number of you have really been wondering what is going on behind the curtains over here. There’s been a lot of silence, and for that I sincerely apologize. There are very few times when I feel as if words completely elude me, anyone who listens to Haste knows this already, yet they have for some time now. That being said, also know that I’m intimately aware that silence can do more harm than even the worst of words. Things have been volatile for me recently on both a personal and professional level, but seeing as how this isn’t LiveJournal I’ll spare you the details. So let’s get to the point…

I’m aware that recently I’ve mentioned “soon” or “next week” or “keep your eyes peeled” often in regards to updates, and even though each time those words had the best intentions behind them, they still wound up falling flat. Time after time. After so long of being unable to provide anything of substance so many times, I decided keeping my mouth shut was the lesser of two evils. I hate making promises I can’t deliver on. You won’t see any promises being made in this blog post either, but that’s not the point.

The point is to fill you in on the past several months, I owe you that much. More than that much to be honest, but this will have to do for now. In these months a lot of things at OP have been changing. This post should hopefully fill in the blanks for any questions you might have, so please stay a while and listen.

Ch-ch-ch-Changes

First and foremost, in an effort of complete transparency on my behalf, my job duties are changing. I’ll no longer be handling the logistics of delivering physical rewards / prizes from contests, etc. Mainly because I don’t feel I was able to keep up with some of them. I care about this community and I want what is best for them, this means if I have to swallow my pride and ask someone else to step in and help then that’s what I’ve got to do.

I am tying off loose ends as we speak such as CotY prize distribution, along with other packages from contests and raffles that are long overdue for mailing out. Overall it’s just proved to be too cumbersome for me to juggle along with everything else that I do, not to mention not having adequate space to store all of these T-shirts! We are undecided yet as to who will fill this role, but we’ll get it worked out and back on track in the coming months.

What my job duties are going to be moving forward will be much more focused on community interaction and growth, and helping shape the direction of the site.

Acquisition

Speaking of the direction of the site, you may be wondering why that’s something I’m going to be in charge of. Well I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t sad to bring this news to you all, but Micah is no longer with Obsidian Portal. His reasons for departing from the site are his own and if you care to know more I suggest you reach out to him personally, I won’t be answering questions on his behalf or speaking for him in any way.

What you should know is that that he did leave on good terms and is still in contact with the folks who now handle the development and upkeep of the site in order to make this transition smooth. Travis and myself are still here, as are a whole new host of helpful folks who are going to help get stretch goals knocked out, bugs fixed, and a bright future to look forward to.

Kickstarter Stretch Goals

Yeah, stretch goals. Let’s talk about those why don’t we? Over the years I’ve learned the virtues of under-promising and over-delivering, which is exactly what we thought we were doing with some of our Kickstarter Stretch goals. We never wanted to make any big flashy statements, and always tried to be reserved with what we announced. Each and every stretch goal went over meticulous consideration and were measured out accordingly, at least we thought. Somehow still fell short. We are aware that some of them are long overdue. Luckily, Obsidian Portal’s new owners are dedicated to making sure a development team gets assigned to knock these goals out very soon.

A team is already being assembled for the Map reworking, as well as the name generator. Here are some status updates on each of those:

Map Reworking

Currently sourcing map markers

Zoom levels being improved upon

Name Generator

Dwarf name generation is complete (got the best race out of the way first!)

Randon names based on specific rules complete

Gathering more names for other races / genres currently

The only thing I’d like to add here is that we’re going to need names from you guys. Per feedback in the forums I believe we’re going to be sending out a Kickstarter survey asking for some names. This is a great way to get you guys re-involved and also makes is super easy for us to pull them in and import them into a database.

Missteps and Moving Forward

I’m aware that during the Kickstarter we could have done many things differently. We should have beta tested more, longer, with a wider spread of users. We should have kept regular updates on the KS page after the campaign was over instead of assuming everyone listened to our podcast. There are a lot of things I could sit here and nitpick, but what I want to focus on here is moving forward. I want to acknowledge those mistakes publicly yes, we messed up. But we really care, and we’re really dedicated to righting our wrongs and getting things back in action.

As a bit of an aside, here’s a fun fact for you guys, it’s not something a lot of people know. Obsidian Portal has never been more than 4 people up until very recently (the acquisition). At first it was just Micah and Ryan, then myself, then travis. I know a lot of people are under the impression that there were dozens of us. That being said, the inability to handle the sheer influx of information at times (feedback, bug reports, support tickets, feature requests, Kickstarter, etc.) could get overwhelming, especially since all of us all hold full time day-jobs. Luckily though, those days have changed and we now have the backing of a full size company to help get things coded, patched, tested, and implemented.

I’ve been with OP for over 4 years now, I came onto the site as a fan and wound up helping out. That turned into a job and now it’s turned into helping steer the Obsidian ship in the direction I want to see it go. I can’t do this without you guys though, I’ve never been able to do any of it without you. Obsidian Portal is a great place, and I want to make sure it keeps on getting better.

Here are some of my goals I’ve presented to the new team for moving forward, these are of course after Kickstarter stretch goals are met and bugs are squashed. Once again these are not promises, but things I’d really like to see us accomplish in the near future.

Updated forum software

A unified forum theme to match the site

A unified blog theme to match the site

A separate sub-site for the Haste podcast

Gift subscriptions for Ascendant time

There’s of course more than that, but some of them may be too pie in the sky for right now, and others may be things I dare not say aloud unless some of you get way too excited about them! That’s it for this mini-novel, I’ll see you guys around the forums, twitter, facebook, and everywhere else!

Much respect,

Jerry LeNeave

Community Manager, Obsidian Portal

]]>17Jerryhttp://blog.obsidianportal.com/?p=29672015-03-31T15:39:39Z2015-03-17T16:43:03Z#LINK#]]>Better Late Than Never!

We know the post is a little bit overdue but we’re getting things back on track here and what better way than to get a big announcement out of the way. There were a ton of great campaigns in 2014 and running this every year it seems to get harder and harder to pick just one campaign to root for!

Before we get to the big drumroll though I need to let everyone know about some changes to the Campaign of the Year prize. This year, we’re going to be giving our winner a $75 Amazon gift card. Yes it’s a little less bombastic than a trophy filled with dice, but it’s sure as heck going to go alot further and allow the winner to score some awesome gaming schwag!

The Winner Is…

So, let’s get back on track here. There were a ton of great games up for the prize this year, but I’m pleased to announce that with over 40% of the vote, the winner is…Regnum! So be sure to stop by AZ_Rune‘s game and say congrats next time you get a chance!

Stay tuned for the next few campaign of the month for February and March of 2015, they will arrive soon on the blog here! Until then, game on!

]]>4Jerryhttp://blog.obsidianportal.com/?p=29652015-03-31T15:39:27Z2015-02-02T22:18:21Z#LINK#]]>Another Great Year of Gaming!

It’s that time again! Start casting your votes for who should win the title of Campaign of the Year for 2014. Our winner will not only receive the prestige of the title itself, but a gilded trophy filled with dice!

Need to jog your memory? Check out the quick links below or just hit up the blog archives and do some research. Then be sure to cast your vote at the bottom of the post here. Good luck!

Vote Now!

Please take note that below the default choice goes to January, this unfortunately is by design of our form software. Please pay close attention and nominate the right campaign before you click submit.

Fill out my Wufoo form!
]]>7Jerryhttp://blog.obsidianportal.com/?p=29622015-03-17T16:44:17Z2015-02-02T21:06:11Z#LINK#]]>We sat down with GM Planeswalker to talk to him about Skies of Glass recently, and we really think you’re going to like it. Pull up a chair by the hearth and read on fellow portallers!

First off, feel free to tell us about the person(s) behind the GM screen. Where are you from? What do you do both aside from gaming? Wife and kids? Where can we stalk you on the internet, that sort of thing!

My name is Stephen Pool, I’m 24. I’m originally from Washington but I’ve lived in Moscow, Idaho for nearly seven years now. Because people get uppity when you don’t pay bills, I work as a research economist and occasionally continue my work as a graduate student at the University of Idaho. I predominantly do local area impact analysis work with a local professor, though I occasionally do cost/benefit analysis work for engineering firms or other businesses. As you can tell, my work makes for extremely interesting small talk. No wife or kids, though I have a husky that whines like a baby if she doesn’t get a share of my dinner. I don’t really have any sort of internet presence, aside from a few of my studies circulating out on the internet.

Skies of Glass is decidedly a collaborative effort, so it wouldn’t be right to go on without at least briefly introducing my players. We have Cayden, our lesser angel inquisitor, who’s currently in college studying computer science and does programing work for a local engineering firm. Ned, our shapeshifter wild mage, is currently in college studying wildlife resources and regularly works as our party chef. Finally, we have Reikhardt, our leonin paladin, who is a published fantasy author and works as a professional copy editor.

So…tell us about Skies of Glass in a nutshell

Skies of Glass started as something of a thought experiment a few years back. I’d just gotten back into a Pathfinder game after something of a break and was in a game that, while fun, had a distinctly “railroaded” feel to it. It got me thinking, “What if I made a world, instead of making a story?” That sort of freeform world seemed like it would be a dream for an advocate of Player Agency (the ability for a player able to control their own in-game destiny), and it seemed like it could be a mess of fun if done right. But, I needed the right system and setting to make it work.

I decided to dust off an old Magic: The Gathering Tabletop RPG I’d started working on years ago. The system was designed to bring Pathfinder’s core mechanics together with Magic’s Multiverse setting, giving me a rich assortment of worlds, races, and stories to draw from. The game itself runs much like D&D 3.5 or Pathfinder, but with a variant that allowed magic to be accessible to all players, rather than just a few specific classes. The five pools of magic replaced class spell lists, mana points replaced the old spells per day/spells known rules, and all classes now have at least a small amount of magic available to them.

With the mechanics for Skies of Glass in hand, I set to my first major goal – creating a free-form world that could surprise even me. After establishing the world of Creed and its major continents, nations, organizations, and the major players in the world, I set to creating a system of “controlled chaos” to help guide the story my players and I were making in occasionally unexpected directions. Unfortunately, that meant a lot of work done upfront to get the system running. I had to develop extensive reserves of major NPCs, unique items, and fantastic locations, create entire folders full of story seeds, mystical events, and, more importantly, hunt down the best random generators I could find for the secondary details in the world. I even adopted some excellent hex travel and random encounter mechanics to help keep travel and even day-to-day life in a city interesting and unpredictable.

When I started our game just a few months later, we ran a couple sessions of the party as children, touching on events in their lives as they aged, and ran their final tests before graduation. After giving them a few connections in the world, I set them free to do whatever they wanted to and set to work guiding the story they developed. Reikhardt, talking about our game, said “It’s the first and only tabletop game I’ve ever played that felt completely open-ended and packed full of stuff to do at the same time. Sure, I’ve played homebrew settings before or homemade modules that moved from one place in the world or worlds to the next, but none with the unbridled freedom found in Skies of Glass. We’re not just getting a ‘hero’ label slapped on us and pointed at the local marauding dragon. We’re in a living, breathing world and taking our place in it.” Cayden and Ned, the verbose fellows that they are, followed with a quick “Ditto.” Love these guys.

What do you enjoy most about D&D?

As a GM, my favorite thing about D&D 3.5, and Pathfinder specifically, is just how easy it is for me to build within the system. Skies of Glass has more than 30 base races, many of which are races fans of Magic: The Gathering should find familiar – flamekin, kitsune, leonine, loxodon, and viashino, just to name a few. We also have swaths of new materials, new items (over 200 unique items and counting), and a totally unique enchantment mechanic. Between the race creation guidelines developed for Pathfinder and the item creation guidelines developed in D&D 3.5, we have some excellent source material to work with. More importantly, it lets my players build within our world. It’s far from perfect, but it works within a certain margin of error, and I’ve found that a system that lets me and my players all design content for our game to be absolutely invaluable.

Regarding tabletop role-playing games as a whole, our group really enjoys them for two major reasons: cooperative storytelling and immersive role-play. As Reikhardt puts it, “It combines my love of writing with my love of theatre — the wonderful improv dialogue you get when good friends get together to tell a story is priceless, whether we’re invading a necromancer’s fortress, relaxing at some hot springs, or having a crisis of faith and being supported by your friends.”

How regularly do you play, and where do you play? (If you play online, do you use any certain tools to accomplish your gaming such as Google hangouts, roll20, etc.)

We aim to play every Sunday, right here in my living room, though school crunch and family demands occasionally mean we skip a weekend here or there. North Idaho has this nasty habit of getting cold in the winter (shocking, I know) and giving us some pretty icy roads. So, during the winter, we usually call a hiatus until travel improves. During these downtimes we usually run short, vignette-styled games with what fraction of our group can still get together. These short story games allow us to explore other places and other times on Creed, letting us develop the world from a different angle without spoiling anything for the main game.

Who puts all of your wiki together?

By and large, I do the leonin’s share of work on the wiki. The world and its people, the mechanics and items – I either created or assembled most of that. I also write up the occasional message, report, newsletter, or vision my players receive using the Adventure Logs. However, since I’m usually putting up multiple new pages a week, I rely on my players to edit pages for grammar, spelling, punctuation, and occasionally fact-check to keep our wiki internally consistent.

Spells are the one part of the wiki we all really chip in for. Since magic is such a huge part of Skies of Glass and is much more accessible than in a normal Pathfinder game world, we wanted to carefully curate the list of spells we allowed. So, we’ll all sit down from time to time and burn through huge swaths of 3.5 and Pathfinder material to find spells we like, or edit them until we like them. We also take time to build new spells as needed, bonus points if we can base it off an existing Magic: The Gathering card. So far we have more than 1,200 spells approved for our game, with more being added from time to time.

Where do you draw inspiration from when preparing your game?

Skies of Glass is set in the Magic: The Gathering universe, so unsurprisingly some of the stories and characters call back to that origin. A lot of the monsters I use in the game are my own interpretations of MTG creatures, and a number of spells, items, or other mystical elements in the world come from that same source. Calling it incidental fanfiction probably wouldn’t be unfair, though I prefer to think of it as an elaborate love letter to Wizards of the Coast.

Beyond that, I find I draw quite a lot of inspiration from real-world stories and events. My players have interacted with the inspirational byproduct of many a Grimm Fairy Tale and more than a few fables and legends. Our communal experience with story elements from games such as the Legend of Zelda, Chrono Trigger, Dark Souls, and even Monster Hunter have invariably influenced our game. Fortunately, we work aspects of famous and more highbrow stories such as Don Quixote, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and the likes of Monty Python into our world to class up the joint.

How much time do you usually take to prepare for a session?

For most sessions I prepare fairly little, letting the events of the day develop naturally. Our system of “controlled chaos” forces me to regularly react to unexpected circumstances. I can make some predictions given how well I know both my players and my NPCs, but even then, every session to date has surprised me in one way or another. Most of the preparation for a session honestly takes the form of forum discussions about things like new spells or magic items, what Ned’s cooking for our next game, or any downtime events between games.

Music is one of the few things I find myself regularly working on between sessions. Since the beginning, music selection has been an integral part of our efforts to create proper tone and mood for Skies of Glass. Towns each have their own unique theme music, even some enemies and events have dedicated songs. We’ve all spent a chunk of time building a great library of music with more than 3,000 songs specifically for our game, and I try to add at least a few new songs to that list every week. As Cayden notes, “Music has helped our campaign feel so much more alive. It can help you feel the emotion of a scene, or foreshadow a sudden shift to something more somber and serious. The right music can absolutely make or break a scene – bringing you closer to your characters, creating a truly immersive experience.”

However, I do occasionally get the chance to run a good old fashioned, multi-session dungeon romp, and those usually end up taking a few days of free time to build. I still utilize randomization as much as I can, but I enjoy taking the opportunity to build bizarre environments, puzzling challenges, and some really cinematic battles. Similarly, I love the opportunity to build unique and thematic rewards for these adventures.

Aside from D&D I’m sure you have played other systems too, what are some others you enjoy?

Over the years I’ve predominantly played in and run D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder games. I’ve played a small amount of D&D 4th edition but wasn’t terribly thrilled with it. However, Wizards’ most recent system looks very promising — it feels like they’ve gone in a much stronger and more flavor-rich direction with 5th edition. Unfortunately, aside from devouring the books, my only real exposure to it has been watching the incredibly fun Temple of the Lava Bears podcast done by Loading Ready Run — hopefully I’ll get a chance to poke at those mechanics myself at some point. It’s very possible we’ll end up incorporating elements of 5th edition into Skies of Glass at some point; goodness knows my players have already been suggesting possible additions.

Other than that, my players and I have explored a handful of other systems – GURPs, Exalted, Shadowrun, Fading Suns, and a very unique homebrew system based on the Fallout games, just to name a few. Not too long ago, we began playing a Mage: The Ascension game, the only other game we’re actively running at the moment. First game I personally have played in the World of Darkness and I’m certainly finding it a unique setting to explore.

How do you know your players, how long have you been gaming with them?

Reikhardt and I have been good friends since 2008. We were both in the same dorm and we ended up getting to know each other at one of the first few tabletop games I was ever in, one he ended up taking over and running for nearly a year in fact. He and I have been in probably a dozen-odd games since then, playing with a handful of other local players over the years. I finally met Cayden and Ned when I joined a game Reikhardt was running in 2012 and the lot of us have been close friends ever since. We’ve all got our strengths and weaknesses, checks and balances against each others’ quirks, so gaming together has been a real joy over the years.

How long have you been using Obsidian Portal? What brought you to the site and what keeps bringing you back?

I’ve been using Obsidian Portal since late 2009…and wow that seems like a long time ago. I’d been playing D&D 3.5 for around a year and a half at that point and decided it was about time I tried creating my own game. I was looking at running a retelling of the adventures of The Weatherlight, but I was concerned that the depth of the Magic: The Gathering universe might be a problem for my players unfamiliar with the setting. When I found Obsidian Portal, I realized I’d found a medium I could use to easily record and share world histories, racial traits, and political bullshit – the small details that I felt were absolutely vital for the story I wanted to tell.

Now that the Reforging has been live for a little while now, what are your favorite parts?

The improved search function, without a doubt, was my group’s favorite addition. Skies of Glass has more than 1,300 pages in the wiki and it’s pretty easy to lose things in that jungle.

What’s been the biggest highlight of Skies of Glass so far?

When I asked my party to pick a “best moment” for me to write about, I wasn’t really surprised they all had the same answer, it was my personal choice as well. It was late last December and, through a set of unexpected circumstances, our paladin, Reikhardt, was dying. Having been knocked unconscious by the arctic breath of a rimefire dragon, he was freezing to death and slowly turning into a leonin-shaped block of ice. The party had teleported just outside the elven capital after fleeing the attacking dragons. But even as the guards were rushing to the academy to find a mage who could possibly undo the transformation, the players realized their friend didn’t have nearly that kind of time. Our wild mage, Ned, decided to use a powerful Object of Legend (what other settings would call an Artifact) that was bound to him and managed to save the paladin’s life.

Heading into the city, the adventurers decided to take some time off and enjoyed a day of excessive relaxation – at least, until midnight. Right as the town clock began to chime, a fae ally of theirs (a rarity in Creed) appeared in their room and told them, in no uncertain terms, that they were being hunted. A great enemy of the elves, the Fairy Queen, had been watching the city that day and noticed the presence of the legendary object – an object she greatly desired, as she believed it would be key in setting her and her children free from their Faewoods prison. She would be coming for it, with an army of fae at her back, and she would stop at no cruelty to have it, and the wild mage it was bound to, be hers.

What began as a completely random encounter — a thread into a minor story the adventurers could choose to pursue — became something completely game-changing that I never would have seen coming. Ned, having been right at the heart of the situation, perhaps says it best. “The natural chaos of the setting created a scenario straight out of left field, and the reaction was something I think every gamer wishes they could take part in. Watching our paladin cry out in frustration, powerless to protect his childhood friend, our inquisitor trying to logic out our options while working to calm everyone else, all while I got to immerse myself into my character’s mind as he was crippled by his fear of what forces would soon engulf him. It was an incredible experience, some of the most intense and emotional roleplay I’ve ever experienced and an amazing bonding experience for our group.”

Okay, before we get out of here, give us some of your best GM’ing pearls of wisdom.

I think there are really four “key” elements to any truly great table-top game: make your players care about their world, make your players feel like they can engage with your NPCs, make your players care about the events transpiring around them, and make your players feel like they can affect those events in at least some recognizable fashion. I don’t think any of those are anywhere near an original thought, but I’ve seen a lot of GMs overlook those core fundamentals. A handful of well-developed NPCs that your players love to interact with and a strong feeling of Player Agency are the real seeds of a great adventure.

Beyond that, I’d encourage other GMs who desire a cohesive and friendly party to spend time developing early-on reasons the characters would want to stick together and care about one another. Skies of Glass spent our entire first session with the characters as young children, becoming friends, and growing together. When you have a party that rallies together through thick and thin, not for wealth or power, but because they’re friends and really love each other — that resonates in a very powerful way.

That’s all for now everybody, keep those CotM suggestions flowing straight to my inbox! Until next time, game excellently with one another!

]]>7Jerryhttp://blog.obsidianportal.com/?p=29552015-03-29T16:32:20Z2014-12-11T04:34:28Z#LINK#]]>Today we’re joined by Sean Patrick Fannon to talk to him about his epic fantasy world of Shaintar. Shaintar is a campaign setting and standalone game that uses the Savage Worlds ruleset.

We’ve been meaning to pick Sean’s brain for quite some time now and since we’re so long overdue we’ve got a bigger than normal review split up into two parts. Herein is the first part. Sit back and enjoy, and be sure to go and check out Shaintar when you’re done reading!

So, first off, can you tell us about Shaintar in a nutshell? What’s its elevator pitch?

“It’s like Lord of the Rings meets Die Hard.”

One of my players came up with that, and it stuck so hard it wound up on our official shirts.

It’s Epic High Fantasy, and the capital letters are by design. There’s plenty of dark, plenty of dungeon-delvers, and plenty of post-apocalyptic dark dungeon delvers. Shaintar is meant to be a place where you play cinematic action adventure heroes doing mighty, exciting things for reasons other than simply getting richer and better at killing more things.

Why Savage Worlds?

Everything about the system fits perfectly for what I wanted for Shaintar. The flexibility of character creation without classes and levels mixed with a heavy emphasis on over-the-top action and pulp-style adventure – this fits the vision for Shaintar well.

At the same time, there was no classic high fantasy setting for SW when I brought this to the market. When Shane Hensley discovered that I was looking for the right system, he hooked me up with some of the earliest stuff; we both understood what I could do with a system like that and grand heroic fantasy. The rest is history.

How long has Shaintar been in the making?

In many real ways, I started working on what would become Shaintar in 1977, when I opened up the boxed set of the first Dungeons & Dragons game. There was “The Keep on the Borderlands,” and I decided to start building my own lands for the Keep to sit on the border of.

As I worked my way into the games industry as a professional in the late 80s, I brought along Shaintar with thoughts about how I might present it. There was a plan to bring it out as an official Fantasy Hero setting, but the marketplace changed during that time. We explored having it as a centerpiece of what became the Fuzion system’s set of products, but that fell apart pretty hard.

Finally, Shane hooked me up with Savage Worlds back in 2007, and I’ve not looked back.

What are some of your sources of inspiration when creating Shaintar?

There’s a huge section on this in the first core book, but I can rattle right from the tip of my fingers at the keyboard – The Lord of the Rings (fiction and movies), Babylon 5, Silverado, Record of the Lodoss War, the Fionavar Tapestry (and everything else connected to it by Guy Gavriel Kay), the Forgotten Realms, Birthright, the Belgariad and Mallorean…

What do you think are some of the most truly unique aspects of Shaintar both in story, and in gameplay?

The setting itself encourages deep backstory and epic thinking with your player character. It also guides the Game Master to think cinematically and grandiose about their stories. With the advent of the Justice and Life campaign, we’ve taken things in a direction no official setting has ever tried before.

Players and GMs are now free to play in the canonical setting, as published, and to have their stories and adventures matter to the official setting. With this in play, you can truly live in the epic fantasy world, and your stories matter in ways no other fantasy gaming experience has ever allowed before.

I see there are enhanced rules for magic within the SW system, a lot of people say that SW doesn’t do magic too well by default. What have you done to change that up?

I am proud of the reception folks have to how Shaintar enhances the use of Powers and magic in the Savage Worlds rules. There are distinctive and flavorful styles of magic, each with its strengths and challenges. From matters of terminology (using the word “Essence” instead of “Power Points” for the fuel for casting) to enhancements to the core Powers (the Applications concept in Legends Arise, which allows sorcerers to craft expanded spells, and a highly evolved use of Trappings), there’s a lot more going on with magic in Shaintar than in the standard SW setting.

As well, players can start playing with huge magic once they become Legendary, as the Legends Unleashed book introduces High Magic that rivals any of the really big spells you’ll find in other fantasy games.

At the same time, all of these rules flow very naturally and simply from the core mechanics, making it all intuitive and easy to use.

On a scale of 1 to 10, where would you say Shaintar lies in complexity?

For someone with no Savage Worlds experience at all, it might fall as a 5 or 6. Savage fans will probably find it more of a 3.

There are so many fantasy RPGs out there pulling for our attention, right now especially. What should convince people to check out Shaintar over the others?

I am often quoted by reviewers and fans with the two following statements I’ve made –

“I created Shaintar not for Adventurers. Not for perfectly-balanced parties of Dungeon Delvers. Not for Self-Centered Rogues and Murder-Bent Warriors. Shaintar is a land for Heroes. Shaintar is a crucible of Legends. Leave the dungeons for the grave robbers and the mercenaries. You have greater, finer things to do.”

“The world of Shaintar is not a place for killing kobolds for their copper pieces. The world of Shaintar is for Heroes. More than that, it is for Legends. LEGENDS. NEVER. DIE.”

Honestly, I just cannot say it better than that.

There is a ton of wonderful artwork within the Shaintar pages, what artists have you worked with to bring it to life?

The most definitive Shaintar artist over the years is the incomparable Jason Engle. I am extremely grateful and honored he’s done so much for the setting, both in terms of illustration and design. At the same time, the stable of artists working with the Savage Mojo team are incredibly talented, and many of them have contributed significantly to the beauty and terror of the imagery of Shaintar.

Finally, I must give a shout-out to Susan “Sooz” Knowles, who’s done far more to enhance my experience with Shaintar than most will ever know.

What kind of supplements are we going to see moving forward with Shaintar?

The slew of 30+ Guidebooks, Black Lantern Reports, and other products from the Kickstarter continue to flow. Cultures, nations and kingdoms, factions, and more are all in the works or already out. Almost all of them will have something for players to add to their playing experience, and GMs will find tons of added material for their games.

It’s habit for me to ask for GM’ing pearls of wisdom, and you’ve been gaming a long time Sean. If you had just one chunk of advice to give GM’s everywhere, what would it be?

Communicate your expectations with your players right from the start. Be willing to set guidelines and limits, and make sure your players understand as they create their characters and as they engage with your campaign. Most players will greatly appreciate knowing what kinds of characters will work best for your story and for the setting, rather than stumbling about and trying to figure out how to fit in. This kind of communication also goes a long, long way towards regular, fun, harmonious gaming experiences instead of constant stress and tension at the table.

]]>0Jerryhttp://blog.obsidianportal.com/?p=29462015-02-02T22:19:32Z2014-12-11T03:59:04Z#LINK#]]>Today we’re joined by GM Onsilius to talk to him about his amazing Pathfinder campaign that’s been going on for over a decade! Onsilius himself has over 25 years of GM’ing experience and is quite a hoot to interview. Sit down and enjoy yet another great campaign, a great way to capstone 2014!

First off, feel free to tell us about the person(s) behind the GM screen. Where are you from? What do you do both aside from gaming? Wife and kids? Where can we stalk you on the internet, that sort of thing!

Hi, Obsidian Portal! My friends and I are thrilled to have our site featured, so thanks for having us. My name is Dr. Heinrik Peitrson, and what I’m about to tell you is little known and less understand but could shake the foundations of this universe and the next. Ok, that’s not entirely or partially true. I’m 39, and I advise IT organizations on financial modeling and service costing (I think). It comes with a paycheck, so it qualifies as a living which is nice. What I’d really like to do is get paid millions of dollars to DM for someone rich (please msg me if you’re filthy rich and this sounds like a relationship you’d like to pursue, I’m totally worth it).

I don’t have an internet profile, but you can find traces of me as A.A. Salati, my pseudonym for writing Shadowrun adventures. I published a few for CGL and did editing work on a pile of others. Some are still available on http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/. None have moved me closer to being a millionaire GM. I offered to edit Bruce Heard’s Calidar setting, but he turned me down. As a result, his book included three typos and two sentences with confusing structure. Why, Bruce? Why?!?

I have a wife and twin girls who spend part of their year in Japan and the rest of it putting up with me in Cary, North Carolina. Kusai ojisan dayo! (I’m a stinky, old man.) We have a robotic toilet and don’t wear shoes in the house. No pets, because dogs don’t handle their own poop, and cats touch theirs. The mixing of these worlds and floors where shoes cannot be worn would destroy everything we hold dear.

We play piano, and I go to the gym daily to justify drinking beer every night. I like grilling meat and rice balls, and I started playing basic D&D around ’81 with my neighborhood friend’s dad DMing. I was five or six and couldn’t believe someone let me have a mace and let me smash orcs with it! How awesome is that? I’ve never lost that excitement for gaming all these years.

So…tell us about Karameikos in a nutshell

Karameikos started around thirteen years ago. I had played a LOT of D&D and was looking for a new angle to try. My favorite thing about RPG’s is that you can change the world you’re in. That is such a cool game concept to me! There is no video game in existence that can go as far as an RPG campaign in letting a player live out their fantasies. So I wanted to create a campaign where my players knew this game was for the long haul. If they ever had a grand dream they wanted to play out, this would be their opportunity. Next, I needed a setting, but I knew I didn’t have the time to create one from scratch. I wanted to spend my time writing adventures. I loved the gazetteers of Mystara, the Basic D&D world. They had plenty of politics, npcs, adventure hooks, and 5,000 years of history. All my players had adventured there before, so it was a good start for a shared reality.

Finally, I needed a new angle, something challenging, something that would turn the game upside down. My first player had never played a wizard. His dream was to become the greatest, so I started him at Level 0 and changed the timeline. He began as a poor, orphan scribe in an alternate timeline where great adventurers went back in time two centuries before to destroy a great artifact that held power over all magic. Mystara was changed into a world where the arcane was despised, where arcaners were burned at the stake, and clerics had great influence. How’s that for a challenge?

That’s how the campaign started. After ten years, the party was with great sacrifice able to travel back in time to convince the great adventurers not to destroy the artifact, thus restoring the true timeline where arcane magic could be pursued openly. That is also when the Karameikos campaign became the Glantri campaign (Glantri is a magocracy they moved to. It didn’t exist in the alternate timeline.), and DM D started running a side by side campaign in Karameikos. You’ll see this in our Session Logs. The session titles all start with Karameikos: or Glantri: and note who DM’ed.

What do you enjoy most about Pathfinder?

I had no idea what Pathfinder was. It didn’t say “D&D” in it, so I wasn’t interested. We were playing 3.x (3.0 and 3.5 with some Basic D&D stuff and house rules thrown in). We had no idea why there was a 3.0 and 3.5 for that matter. When 4th edition came out, we were disappointed. MMOGs were copies of some of the aspects of tabletop RPGs, and 4th seemed like a tabletop copy of an MMOG. That in itself is fine, and MMOGs are fun, but 4e looked nothing like the D&D we loved, so we never considered it. We kept playing 3.x for a while. Years later I finally read the Pathfinder book and felt like I had found the real 4th edition of D&D. We swtiched soon after and have been playing it since.

What I like about Pathfinder is that it’s still the core mechanics of the original D&D with the same classes. On top of that, you get the customizability of feats! This lets players differentiate fighter from fighter and wizard from wizard. You can easily play any style of class you can envision. I really appreciate that freedom, and my campaigns are about freedom, the freedom to play out their fantasies. Pathfinder is a good fit for us and will be for some time.

How regularly do you play, and where do you play? (If you play online, do you use any certain tools to accomplish your gaming such as Google hangouts, roll20, etc.)

We’re all stinky, old men with families and jobs and not as much time as we’d like to play, so we probably average once every two to three weeks. Of course we’re not all old and stinky. One of our players’ young brother-in-law is half our age. We got him hooked early and now he and a friend make up half the party. We play in China and Korea and Cary, North Carolina. How’s that for the internet age! Our favorite is playing at my house in NC. There’s no substitute for sitting at the table together, eating snacks, and staying up too late, and I have a private game room where the kids won’t bother us (yeah, right ). However, young Salhadin is stationed in South Korea, his friend Hakim keeps going to China to study, and the rest of us resign ourselves to online play more often than not.

Online is pretty good actually. We couldn’t get together in person as often as we’d like to play, so it’s a huge enabler. We use Google Hangouts plus Roll20 for map sharing, image sharing, private DM messaging, and dice rolls. Google Hangouts gives us voice and video, and the quality is high. You can see each other clearly, so it’s almost like being at the table in front of someone. Roll20 can be tricky getting the scale right on maps, but all around it does everything we need it to. I can show pictures of npcs, ask private things of the players and have them respond without anyone knowing what happened, it handles initiative, and the dice rolling is adequate. All of this, and it’s free, too. All you need is a good connection.

Who puts all of your wiki together?

I created the structure and basic content of our wiki. I repurposed the Session Logs to be placeholders for links to the Players’ Logs. I do the front page stories and intro pages, but I am proud to say the players handle the content of Karameikos! The beasts, the orders, the logs, and the players’ spaces are all done by my players. They’ve added lots of valuable content, and it really takes a load off me so I don’t have to take notes and do so many updates. I’m particularly proud of our logs. Most OP sites use the adventure logs for just that, however, I use them to advertise the next adventure. For instance, if we’re going to play on January 3rd, I’ll throw up a Session Log post with a teaser image, some bullets on what may happen, and preparation tasks for the players. After the session, I flesh out the bullet points like chapters describing what we just played. Then I leave it to the players to write a log in their player log area and link to it from the Session Log. When these eventually get added, their DM can go back in time and read the different players’ perspectives on what happened. Players in return can earn Karma, points to aid them in the short or long term.

Where do you draw inspiration from when preparing your game?

The Basic D&D gazetteers are a big help in giving me a well fleshed out setting, especially The Principalities of Glantri. I have to give that a mention. All of my adventures, however, are written from scratch. I haven’t used a module in ages. I have two fallbacks that I rely on. First, I have the dreams of my players who are aware they can accomplish big things, things that can change the world if they try hard. Seeing them move the plot on their own is rewarding. Feeding them adventures that enable them can write themselves. The wizard Thaljun for example wanted to rise through the ranks of nobles in the wizard run Principalities, so I ran adventures while he attended the Great School of Magic where he would meet other nobles and political figures and let them play out. My second fallback when nothing else is happening is asking myself, what would I love to do?!? What would I think is awesome fun? Raiding a lich prince’s tower with all unique magic traps? Exploring a forgotten tower and crypt with all unique and ancient monsters? How about raising an army to defend a new domain against all political odds? Uncover a great secret of magic few have ever grasped? Yeah!

How much time do you usually take to prepare for a session?

The time it takes to prep for a session can vary from a month of writing and pontificating to a few minutes spent here and there thinking about the campaign while I drive to work, while drinking a coffee on a weekend morning, or while I’m falling asleep at night. A classic dungeon crawl type of adventure takes a certain amount of time. That’s part of the fun of DMing. I can explore the fantasy we’re sharing in my mind to see where it may lead. It’s indulgent escapism, but I think that’s what many rpg gamers dig. For my last one, I used a tutorial on classic blue D&D map reproduction and Gimp 2 to create a cavern and dungeon area beneath a tower atop a craggy hill. That one took me a few weeks to get right, but it was a ton of fun loading that map on Roll20 and letting players explore it. It was a real retro night seeing that classic blue!

I use a few different methods to record what I write. If I come up with a cool idea while I’m out, I’ll email myself the details from my phone or record it on my mobile OneNote app which updates on all devices via Microsoft Live or SkyDrive or whatever they call it now. If I’m on my work laptop or a computer, I’ll use OneNote. If at home on the couch having a coffee, there’s no substitute for my Miguel Ruis notebook and a G-2 gel roller pen. Whatever gets written or recorded is eventually printed or torn out and added to my secret notebook of thirteen years of activity for posterity. It also goes on OP in the form of the players’ logs.

Aside from Pathfinder I’m sure you have played other systems too, what are some others you enjoy?

I started on D&D, then a little MERP (Middle-Earth Role Playing, basically GURP light) and AD&D, OAD&D, Shadowrun1-5, AD&D2-3-3.x, oh and the old Top Secret, too. I used to love some OAD&D (Oriental Adventures). I turned the pages in that book so many times, almost all the pages broke loose. They’re all still there and in order though. My wife is Japanese, and she is flabbergasted every time I name off all the individual pieces of armor that make up a full suit of Yoroi style armor. “How do you know all those? I don’t even know that!” I try to explain to her what a Korobokuru is (dwarf), but she doesn’t buy it. “I’ve never heard that word before. What’s that?” and I’m like, “Uh, they’re dwarves, honey, and they love naginata (bladed spears), but they cap out at level twelve as Samurai, assuming of course they can find a human clan that accepts them despite their dirtiness. For serious yo. What do they teach you in school these days?” Nowadays, I only have time for Pathfinder.

How do you know your players, how long have you been gaming with them?

Thaljun and Elias were already friends when I met them at NC State University in ’94(?). We met playing Netrek in a computer lab. That was one of the first multiplayer online games. Killer game by the way. Then we played a MUD (that’s the first MMORPG) called Genesis (which is still around and going strong today). When we discovered each other’s secret love for D&D, we started playing that as well, also. Eventually, our young brother-in-law and his friends grew old enough to play, and generation two joined the campaign as well. I guess that makes twenty years of gaming together now. I’m fortunate to have friends like that.

Keeping players involved is always a struggle, your Karma system seems like a great way to facilitate that. How does it wind up working in practice?

It was slow to start, but once my players saw the Karma rewards start to be used, it took off! I count we have played 222 sessions in this campaign, and we have logs from most of them by multiple players! Karma can be accumulated and used for bonuses to dice rolls during play and other special effects like winning initiative. It can also be permanently burned to gain stat increases, skill bonuses, bonus feats (some of which are unique and only attained via Karma), avoid death (once per refresh), and even a bonus Level Up! That’s actually happened twice so far which is impressive considering you need 20 points, and you typically earn one point per content submission. Rewarding players with Karma for writing a background and adding content has empowered them to be deeper participants in the campaign and alleviate the load of DMing. I have a bad memory in my old age, and being able to look up details in the logs is a big deal for me. Plus it’s fun to read the players’ RP perspectives on what happened. I’m a stingy DM, so it’s nice to have a reward system in place where players feel empowered to take rewards rather than always waiting to receive them.

Your wiki customization looks great, did you do it all yourself?

I learn by example and by doing, which means I’m a slacker. I did all the CSS wiki customization by myself, but I used Langy’s Edgerunners campaign to deconstruct how overriding CSS worked with Obsidian Portal. I made fairly decent notes on what in my CSS does what and affects what, so if anyone is looking to recreate something they see on Karameikos, you’re welcome to use my CSS as a guide to implementing it. For anyone who wants to start using CSS to customize their site, I recommend w3schools for straightforward examples and trial and error to see what affects what. You can do just about anything you want to accomplish even if you’re untrained like me if you’re willing to tinker. The community of the forums is very helpful if you have specific questions as well.

How long have you been using Obsidian Portal? What brought you to the site and what keeps bringing you back?

Well, I just checked my profile and surprised myself. I registered January 10th, 2008. I was an early adopter of internet services, and when I ran into Obsidian Portal, I think I was searching for DMing aids. The concept got me thinking about a SaaS style information sharing point. I had tried logs back in high school, but this was more gaming styled. DMs and players share a fantasy reality. OP was like that but sharing fantasy information. The idea of recording what we had done appealed to me, and the possibility of players to contribute to it got me excited. What if my players could write some of this stuff for me? Well, it worked. It took the Karma system to get the ball rolling, but I’m very happy with the results.

Now that the Reforging has been live for a little while now, what are your favorite parts?

Whether I’m coding on an internal company intranet, sharepoint, confluence, or whatever, what I appreciate most is the ability to override restrictions and do my own thing. I’m a copy/paste coder, but I manage well. So I would say I appreciate most the enhancements to entering my own CSS to reshape the appearance and functionality of the site. I also appreciate that the Reforging represents continued investment in sustaining OP as the premier online campaign aid. With OP’s user base, that is big potential.

Knowing that the game has been going on for over a decade, this may be a hard one to answer, but what would you say the single biggest highlight from Karameikos has been so far?

Personally, I enjoyed seeing the party rally around its wizard to help elevate him to the high rank of nobility he achieved before his ignominious exile, and I’ve enjoyed seeing them all achieve long term goals which truly impact the domains they care about like rallying armies to defend land they carved out. However, I asked the players for their highlights. I’d like to say it was when the party’s brash fighter was the last man standing against a black dragon they were never meant to defeat so early in its appearance with all his armor destroyed and his comrades sickened and dying around him who landed a natural 20 and natural 20 to confirm a critical that decapitated the dragon… or one of the other epic dragon or demon battles… but it was not so noble a consensus. Apparently, the highlight was a night during Arcanium (a three day celebration of magic in the capital of Glantri) where the fighters all got drunk, investigated a very unusual new House of Ladies of Ill Repute, and met the ladies of the House who turned out to be enslaved half-trolls, vampires, and a medusa who got punched in the face by the wizard Count’s highest knight before he and his companions laid waste with bastard sword and scimitar and general excessive force to the feeble guards and ushers of the House resulting in their near arrest and revocation of their licenses to wield weapons within the city limits. They gave me a good laugh despite how nutty things got, and to be honest, it’s not the worst thing they ever did. Ahh players… can’t live with them… not a game without them.

Okay, before we get out of here, give us some of your best GM’ing pearls of wisdom.

It’s hard to say I have something relevant as far as GM’ing tips. I’ve been GM’ing for 25 years, but that in itself doesn’t mean I’m any good. What I’ve learned came from working hard at this role, well, for 25 years. So my first pearl of wisdom and power is keep trying, and if you enjoy creating a shared fantasy reality for your players, then do whatever YOU love. Don’t feel guilty about taking your campaign where YOU want it to go, because if the GM is not enjoying himself, the game has no future. That’s not a recommendation to force outcomes or put adventures “on the rails” or even to ignore the desire of your players, but be honest with yourself. GMing takes time and effort. If you don’t love what you’re doing, there is no game without the GM. Chances are, if you’re jazzed about the adventures you’re taking your players on, they will be, too.

The only other thing I would say is Don’t be afraid to try new things or put yourself on unfamiliar ground! I’m a writer, so putting everything and every detail down on paper seems not only natural to me but a necessity in order for us to play. One of the hardest things for me to do was let myself write on the fly. That means running an adventure with only a paragraph or two of notes at a very high level and filling in all the details while you play. At a certain point of experience, you can do this! You’ll never know when you’re at that level as a DM until you let yourself try. I gained the confidence by stepping out of my comfort zone and attending a local RPG meetup on DMing and ad lib techniques, and it worked for me. Ask yourself, “Why can’t I write the same things I write before a session during a session?!?” Sure you can! You’re just as creative while your players are watching you as you are alone on the couch with your notebook. In fact, you may find that your creative juices are flowing even deeper while you’re on the spot. That was a big revelation for me and took my fun to the next level. It also freed up more time to play with the kids, go to the gym, drink more beer, and grill more meat which is a big hunk of wins.

Thanks for your time!

Thank you for the recognition and opportunity to talk about our campaign! We’ve been on OP for a long time watching these campaigns get picked, so it’s been a thrill for all of us to be in the spotlight for a month. Thanks to Langy and the forum for the CSS tips. Major props to Pebbles for last month’s interview on his gritty Shadowrun campaign. I’m a fan. And finally thanks to my friends and players who somehow continue to put up with my stingy, difficult, and even lethal adventures over the years!

That’s it for this month folks, that’s also it for 2014. Start thinking about who you’d like to see win that lovely chalice of dice for Campaign of the Year, it’s just around the corner! In the meantime, keep great suggestions for featured campaigns pointed toward my inbox.